Soft Skin Not Meant To Be Alone

The prompt for this piece was to observe and then describe a stranger, and I picked a young man sleeping on Boston Common. I went on to build a whole life story around him too, just by looking at him.

Two days ago his parents kicked him out. They were quote “tired of his bullshit.” Twenty-six years and they give up on him when he needs them the most. He’s numb; his pale, soft skin, preserved from his youth, is completely relaxed as he lay in the shade of a tree in the middle of Boston common. He covers his eyes with fingers nubbed down by constant biting, not to block the bit of sun shining on him through the branches, but to avoid seeing people, seeing people happy. His mostly empty backpack serves as a pillow under his heavy head, consisting of a shirt he won’t change into, a charger he doesn’t need, and money that will go too quickly. To the people who stop to notice, they all want to help. But, those who need to help him, do not care. So, tonight, he will once again aimlessly walk the city streets, up and down, backwards and sideways. He knows them more than he knows anything else, and though he has no bed to sleep in at night, on these streets he feels like he’s home. But, right now he’s not thinking about the city, his parents, or the squirrel crawling too close to his face. Right now, his mind is drifting to when he was young, when he was young and it was okay to be careless. When it didn’t matter if he failed a class, or got fired from his job, because he was only a kid, and he had his whole life to make it. The thought of his High School friends, and how happy he used to make his mother made him turn over and curl up. His mouth watered as he thought of home made food. His eyes fluttered when he thought about his first love. The world around him shut off, and his body, that had conformed to the landscape, accepted that he had nowhere to be, but to dwell on where he once belonged. He then fell asleep clutching the necklace his best friend once gave him, moving his hand to let the sun warm his cheeks.

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